


Look My Way

by AlyKat



Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Insecure Phil, Kinda-sorta-pining, M/M, Phil Needs a Hug, Pining, but not a song fic, inspired by a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:43:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyKat/pseuds/AlyKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil knows he’s nothing special. Certainly not anything worth taking a second glance at…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look My Way

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ralkana for being my beta on this. =P Any mistakes you find, blame her. *Points in her general direction* No, actually, she did a great job, so any mistakes that might be left are totally mine and mine alone and I take full responsibility for them.

  
Phil knows he’s nothing special. He’s past middle aged, his hair keeps getting thinner every time he washes it; there are crinkles around his eyes that he swears sprang up overnight once and just never went away. While he’s still fit enough to take down two armed robbers with nothing but a bag of flour and his two bare hands, or level over-confident baby agents left and right, he by no means has what could be considered a buff or sexy body. Hell, he’s got plenty of his own middle-age-spread that it’s hard to keep the juniors from noticing it.  
  
In his prime, years ago, he’d been gawky at best, ridiculous at worst. Very few people took him seriously. He was just that lowly Agent Coulson, the one who tried too hard and kept falling flat on his face. The guy who spent hours on the firing range trying to master every firearm S.H.I.E.L.D. had at their disposal. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he can still picture that younger him, longing to be noticed but too painfully quiet and plain to be.  
  
Sometimes, he still feels like that younger version of himself.  
  
He’s nothing special. Certainly not anything worth taking a second look at. It’s what makes him so good at what he does. He’s bland. Plain. Unassuming. The epitome of forgettable. He can slip into any situation and with his calm and pleasantly boring smile or eyebrow quirks, get the information he needs and be on his way again. Later, when questioned, all his ‘victims’ would be able to say about the man who robbed them of valuable information is that he was…plain. Polite. Ordinary.  
  
A flirty giggle cuts through the air and he turns his head to look in the direction it came from. Agent Munroe is fresh faced, beautiful in all the right ways, and blushes the most fascinating shade of deep pink. Her sun bleached blond hair twirls around her finger while she sways back and forth absently. Good Lord but focused agents are hard to find these days.  
  
In front of her a man stands with his back to Phil. His shoulders broad and square, perfectly sculpted from years of training and discipline, they’re like what he always imagined a mythical god’s shoulders to look like. Everything about the man screams loose power and absolute control; control of himself and control of everyone’s attention around him.  
  
There’s nothing plain or bland or ordinary about Agent Clint “Hawkeye” Barton.  
  
He’s got deep set eyes that can go from glaring intently into the darkest corners of your soul, to bouncing and sparkling with such joy and life that you feel like your own heart is going to burst out of your chest, on the drop of a dime. His smile and laughter can light up an entire room and has been known to bring a curious hush over typically noisy roadside diners when he laughs just a bit too loud at, what Phil always feels is, pathetically badly told jokes. There is nothing about Clint that could even be considered ‘forgettable’. Not from his perfectly gorgeous hair down to his adorable skinny ankles he tries so hard to hide.  
  
Phil looks away when Barton glances over his shoulder at him. There should be no way someone like Clint would ever want someone like him. Clint deserves to be with someone young and beautiful, like Agent Munroe. Not a pushing-fifty, hopelessly average man like him.  
  
Without a word, his lips press together in a tight, thin line and he quickly heads out the door.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
The door opens quietly, the lock clicking into place once it’s shut again. It’s easy to count the seconds until the bedroom door is opened; the soft yellow-white of the hall lamp spilling onto the bed for just a moment before it’s blocked out again. A quick stop off in the bathroom to take a shower, change into dark plaid pajama pants and a worn, soft and faded Rangers T-shirt, brush his teeth and he’d be coming back into the main room.  
  
The bed dips as he crawls under the blankets and settles down into the quiet darkness.  
  
“You took off pretty quick tonight, Handsome.” The throaty voice murmurs into Phil’s ear and sends a wave of chills and tingles through his body. A strong, protective arm—an arm attached to a perfectly sculpted shoulder—slides over his side and pulls his back flush against a solid and hard front. “Did’ja get to watch your ‘Gypsy Sisters’ marathon?”  
  
Phil nods his head wordlessly.  
  
Lips press to the base of his neck, slowly kissing their way up until a nose is buried comfortably in his hair.  
  
“Mm…that’s good then.” The voice murmurs again. A calloused hand runs up and down his stomach and chest slowly for a moment before sneaking under his shirt. The fingers brush against the scar tissue on his left pectoral and Phil has to bite his lip to keep from whimpering quietly.  
  
“Munroe’s gonna do alright on that undercover op, I think. She’s got the flirting down pretty pat. I almost believed she was straight for a little while there.” There’s a gentle huff as the figure behind him laughs into his neck. “Her girlfriend’s still not happy ‘bout it, but…she’ll get over it.”  
  
Again, Phil just nods.  
  
The room is quiet and still for a long, slow minute before he finds himself being rolled onto his back and a warm, heavy, familiar and comfortable weight settles over top of him. It’s hard to breathe with that much solid muscle holding him down, but he doesn’t mind. Through the darkness he swears he can see those searching and intense eyes bearing down on him.  
  
“You’re stuck in your head again, Phil. C’mon out of there, okay? It gets pretty lonely on the outside and you know I don’t like being alone.”  
  
It’s the subtle tremor in that voice that has the aging agent’s heart twisting and breaking into a thousand pieces. He looks up into those mysteriously colored eyes and can’t for the life of him figure out why there’s so much love and wanting shining bright in them. For him. _For him_. Not for any sweet, young, fresh-faced flirty agents. Him. Phillip Jared Coulson. The everyman agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.  
  
“I’m sorry. I’m just…still trying to figure out what could be so special about me that you’d throw away your freedom to marry me.”  
  
“Jesus… _Phil_. I…we’ve gone over this before.” Slowly, the T-Shirt Phil has on is being peeled away and warm, soft kisses trailing along after it. Every scar he’d ever gotten, from bicycle mishaps to stray gunshots, is kissed and catalogued lovingly.  
  
“You’re smart,” a kiss to the scar he got when he was eight and climbing trees. “You’re _funny_ whether you think so or not,” a slow lick up the jagged scar of where his appendix came out when he was twelve. “You’ve got the most incredible smile, but it’s when you open yourself up enough to laugh and we get that bright open mouthed smile that makes me want to pull you in close and never let you go,” a tentative peck to the first gunshot wound the agent ever got when he was twenty-two. “You’ve got the patience of a saint,” there’s a soft nuzzle and huff against a particularly ragged cluster of rigid skin from road rash from his thirtieth birthday.  
  
Then a pause. Warm breath ghosting over the long, healing grafted skin on his chest, just above where his heart is. Soft lips slowly kiss every last painful inch of that scar, so hesitantly and with such reverence that Phil is certain his heart is going to just stop all over again from emotions. As the last kiss is placed, those deep eyes lifted to look through long, dark lashes at him.  
  
“And because you’re the only man who ever saw me for who I was under all my fuck-off-and-die attitudes and broke down my walls enough to convince me it was okay to let people in. You taught me it was okay to be loved, Phil. No one in the world ever did that for me, but you did. You loved me so much for so long and God help me if I ever find the people responsible for making _you_ feel like you aren’t worth being loved, I’ll—“ His voice trails off as he shakes his head and buries his face in his husband’s neck.  
  
Phil’s arms wrap around his powerful back and he holds him close. He knows tears are fighting to try and well up in his eyes. He can feel them stinging away behind his lids.  
  
“You’re _mine_ , Phil,” that voice mouths against his skin. “You’re mine and you’re wonderful and handsome and the best damn man I’ve ever met. And I’m gonna spend every day reminding you of that until you believe me, damn it, because I love you.”  
  
Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Phil closes his eyes and lets a shaky sigh escape his lips. Turning his head, he presses a kiss into that soft, short, dark blond hair that he loves so very much and tries to keep the raw emotion out of his voice as he whispers into the younger man’s ear.  
  
“…I love you, too, Clint…”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This is all Ralkana’s fault. …I blame her and thank her for this at the same time. I needed to write something that would have me bawling my own eyes out by the time I finished it just to get out all my stupid uber-over-emotional-feels at the moment.


End file.
